This novel is written for people who don't take literature seriously. It has the form of a satirical screenplay that no sensible Hollywood studio would consider. An aging aircraft mechanic, Orville Pressfit, notifies a television station in Ponca City, Oklahoma that he has been taken on a flight in an alien spacecraft while working at night in a small airfield beyond the city limits. Leanne Flambeau, a news reporter with the station, interviews him on camera; she considers this to be just another odd assignment. But the senior citizens of the city view the occurrence as a warning of a threat from outer space directed at defenseless older people. They clamor for the city Board of Commissioners and the Mayor to take action to protect them. A bold resolution is passed demanding specific steps by the Federal government. The first woman President of the United States, Thelma Grayfield, receives the resolution and is told about the alien abduction, but dismisses the report as the imaginings of an elderly inebriate. The protests by the senior citizens persist and spread nation-wide. President Grayfield, in a move to assuage their fears, and to appear responsive, calls upon Walter Masterly, the Chief Operating Officer of Repulsive Technology, Incorporated, a prominent rocket propulsion company. She asks him to prepare a concept paper on a spacecraft that could pursue and challenge a flying saucer. In the face of increasing demands by the older generation, Grayfield goes a step farther and orders the creation of an Interceptor Program to actually build such a craft. Who will build it? Will it work? Are there really any UFOs to pursue? Readers in the aerospace industry will recognize the day-to-day tribulations in moving from vehicle concept to launch. In the comfort of a reclining chair, the reader can experience the drama of a motion picture in which the tension mounts, scene by scene. The endless obstacles to successful completion of this vital program make this novel a true page turner, if that can be said about a fun book.
About the Author: The author of The Interceptor Program, William Vietinghoff, graduated in 1953 from Northwestern University with a Bachelor's Degree in Chemical Engineering. At the time, the political and technology movements in the world, generated by the missile race, converged and created an opportunity for Vietinghoff, at the dawn of the space age, to join the ranks of dozens of other young engineers, pioneers in a way, learning on the job how to get a rocket engine to start and run. Over the ensuing years, Vietinghoff was assigned to many rocket engine, vehicle, and missile programs: Atlas, F-1, Lance, Peacekeeper, KEW, and X-33. In 1955, while confronted by what seemed the impossible task of getting a single rocket engine to operate smoothly, he remembered an article by Wernher von Braun in a 1952 Collier's magazine that contained the unbelievable proposal for a vehicle powered by fifty-one engines to reach the moon. Having done a little fiction writing as a hobby, he composed, in the form of a movie script, a partly true and mostly exaggerated account of a development program charged with the inconceivable mission of building a fifty-one chambered moon vehicle. It was written for the commemoration and commiseration of of his fellow rocket engineers. It was called "The Moon by June". Five copies were printed for limited distribution to his coworkers, but somehow more were created and passed around within the company and to others in the industry. The script went viral. One of the men mentioned in the script suggested Vietinghoff someday write a sequel. The Interceptor Program, which took decades to complete, is that sequel. Vietinghoff, his wife, Gladys, and his two sons and daughter live in California.